Can This Be A Work Around For The 8 KM Visibility?

[Treeburst155]

Situations where the player sees better than his crew do not bother me, as long as the distance is realistic for conditions. We already have something similar with the hydrophone. The crew can be a little blind and a little deaf. If you want it done right, do it yourself. The only small problem would be when operating under high TC. The crew can't be TOO blind.

The Radar Warning, Active Radar, and Hydrophone should still be useful when visibility is less than perfect. The worse the "visual sensors" the more useful the others become.

Treeburst155 out.

[CCIP]

We're getting close it seems. Heh - sorry, been out of the loop here a bit myself, but this seems like a very good picture I'm seeing here.

I have no idea which values you're working with in scene.dat, so I can't exactly test it now. But I'll be on it the moment you have it out, I hope

[Jungman]

I thought to keep the maximum crew visual range down some from the maximum visual spotting range. That way you can as the captain can go on the deck yourself and see a ship's smoke on the horizon first. Just for more fun gameplay.

So far, I can say there is alot of extra good stuff in Manuel's Mod. It works well so far, no real FPS drop for me. I have a P4 2.8 Ghz and 2 Gig RAM, 9600 pro video card. :P

I think shorting the crew visual in the Sensors.dat file by 2 km is good for me. I want to be able to spot a ship first too. Precise range at 13.5 km Max Range remains at 17.5 km. Plus I increased the visual spot sweep time from 15 seconds to 30 seconds. There are four men spotting plus watch officor. That makes for alot of "Ship spotted!" messages. So I reduced the frenquency that way. That is my only small concern.

It is a personal choice. I just prefer for me to have the longest spot range over my crew, and the crew of five men on deck is alot of eyes on the sea. I like some randomness to the spotting at great distance.

I want to try some more testing at dusk to night and see the spotting behaviour. How he changed that Sky Dome is amazing. It is beyond my ability and understanding. :|\ So far so good.

If you want alternate versions of Sensors.dat file for other combo mods that share that file, it can be done easy enough. Plus the fog water was made more opaque. Those changes can be done to the users taste. A faster moving fly camera is also included.

Do you think the watch crew should have some 'nerf' randomness? :hmm:

[sergbuto]

Manuel,

How drastic is the effect of the mod on the fps rate? I do not have the high-end computer at the moment.

[oRGy]

I agree with Jungman's view - the player should if he's good be able to spot things *a little* before the Watch crew. Only thing is of course that the AI spots *you* at a realistic distance, and not 20km off. The U-Boat presents a small profile after all...

[Jungman]

I need a little help on something while testing. My Radar Warning Receiver will not work.

Everything looks OK in Sensors.dat. I think maybe if the visual is detecting the target, the radar warning does not give a redundent message?

The periscope and visual views use square icons. Whereas sonar contacts use lines. But so does the Radar Warning use contact lines just like sonar.

I thought that when on the surface of the water, the visual and radar warning both works at the same time? Maybe not displayed but I would expect a message "Radar Signals Detected".

The normal active radar works. I did make a RF_Detect mod that increases the distance at which RWR works. Does not seem to work either way. All it did was increase the range of RWR and sweep time.

[Manuel Ortega]

Originally Posted by Jungman

Plus the fog water was made more opaque. Those changes can be done to the users taste. A faster moving fly camera is also included.

I increased the underwater fog to a more realistic one (it's a little mod that I did a couple of weeks ago). Sure that people that wants realism at surface visibility also wants realism when underwater.
The fly camera that I plan to include in the final version is the default game camera. In the beta version I installed the amazing FreeCamPro from CCIP in order to have a faster camera and unlimited height for testing purposes.
CCIP, with a little of coordination, both mods can be easily compatible because yours is 'a must be'.

Regarding crew ability to spot a ship, I prefer to keep player and crew opportunities equally. I realize in one of the tests that when there is heavy fog, the ship appears in sight at about 600 m. In those situations you already know where the ship is (by hydrophone) and you are waiting for the ship to appear in the fog in a few moments. I found a silly situation when the ship was entirely on sight for 10-15 seconds and my crew hasn't spotted it yet :P loosing time to shoot if the player doesn't use manual TDC (the locking tool doesn't shows until crew has detected it). So I matched it and both player and crew should spot ships at the same time.

@sergbuto, fps rate will decrease near ports mostly. In my case, with an old AMD 1700 XP with 768 MB RAM and a RADEON 9600, I get about 12 fps in the most adverse situations, and keeps above 25-30 in high seas. Not too much differences with game default values, when I had about 13-15 fps in port.

[sergbuto]

Originally Posted by Manuel Ortega

Sure that people that wants realism at surface visibility also wants realism when underwater.

Not always true. F.e. I do not use periscope for underwater views and therefore do not have a problem with stock water transparency from the realism point of view. On the other hand I would like to keep the stock underwater visibility for making screenshots because F12 external viewing is not realistic anyway.

[Manuel Ortega]

I will make two versions, then.

[Jungman]

Manuel , when I place in the scene.dat file, the Radar Warning seems to not work.

Is there a priority override for messages that negates the RWR from giving the message " Radar Signals Detected"? Due to the Visual being so large.

I do not see any reason why the scene.dat will affect this.

Any thoughts?

When I use the SkyColor file which allows see beyond 10 km, it is OK. The sensor.dat file is OK. It is only when I place in the scene.dat file I loose the Radar Warning.

I did notice one odd hex value that maybe was left over in doing a file comparison. I did not think the scene.dat file would affect the RWR. Unless it is that one odd single hex value.

Here is the one value I do not understand in Scene.dat at adress 000001e2 is 3c. In the original it is 0f. :hmm: Start of the file, right before change to earth radius.

[Manuel Ortega]

That value is the scale of dynamic water. It's built by tiles. By default it is a matrix of 15x15 tiles. This changes the matrix to 60x60. I think this has nothing to do with radar warning, but I can be wrong.

[Duke of Earl]

Please excuse the interruption gentlemen...

I have T1 torpedoes with a range of more than 7500 meters... I am using Jungman's 20/20 mod...

My eyeball can see targets beyond 5000 meters with Periscope... I let the WE setup all my torpedo solutions... but I cannot shoot at them until they are inside 5000 meters... because the WE does not 'see' targets outside 5000 meters... also, I do not use manual Targeting for solutions...

Maybe some consideration to this issue?... increase Periscope 'visual' range for AI to 7500 meters maybe?...

Cordialement, Duke of Earl

[Jungman]

Maybe some consideration to this issue?... increase Periscope 'visual' range for AI to 7500 meters maybe?...

Easy enough. That value is set for 5000m in the sensors.dat file by default. Nothing hidden about it. You can see farther than 5000m yourself, but you "Lock" range will not hold on target.

Just use an hex editor, search sensor.dat file for "periscope" just after it a value in float. Change it from 5000 to 7500 for PreciseRange. Change the MaxRange value from 6000 to 8500m.

It has been a pet peeve for me too. I will add a 7500m to the Sensors.dat file in RF_Detect Mod for you to use. That Mod increases the worthless radar dectectors range to higher level, has the Visual range increase to work also with Manuel visibility Mod.

Or Manuel can simply add it to the sensor.dat file in his Mod also. It will be a good fix. Thanks Duke.

I need to redo RWR mod to work with the new fog ranges in Visibility Mod for historic reasons and gameplay. I can slip that near sighted periscope buglet fix in there. Also you will find it in a newer version of SensorPak later.

That value is the scale of dynamic water. It's built by tiles. By default it is a matrix of 15x15 tiles. This changes the matrix to 60x60. I think this has nothing to do with radar warning, but I can be wrong.

Thanks Manuel. It seems to happen when I replace the scene.dat file only.

It does not occur with the sensors.dat or the added Skycolor.dat. Only when I add the scene.dat the ability to pick up RWR is gone. If I put the original back in, the RWR works.

If you just use the sensors.dat and stock scene.dat and leave out the skycolor.dat, you will not see past 10 km but the RWR will work. If you then add in the modified scene.dat then the RWR is not working.

I am rechecking all my files for corruptions and retesting, it could be something on my end.

Maybe give out a copy to CCIP and others who are also really good at spotting buglets or verify if something is odd?

[Duke of Earl]

Thanks Jungman... very true about the long distance 'Locked' View... it won't hold but just a few seconds... just good enough for the WE to ID and get a spot solution, but not good enough to shoot on...

By the way, today I was playing a mission with a souped up XXI... I believe it had Naxos detector (coil spring antenna)...

In calm weather, I was getting Radar Detects from Wellingtons in the 14k - 18k range... of course, Naxos is high-end equipment, but it seemed to work ok..

Radar detects from DD's @ sea level come in at a lower range than aircraft, but it is still a very respectable distance...

I am using your Version 1 SensorPak mod files...

Cordialement, Duke of Earl

[Immacolata]

Originally Posted by Jungman

That is the basic changes. I though maybe you may want the WO not to be perfect, by increasing the Sweep Time under Visual in the Sensors.dat file for 15 seconds to maybe something higher? Plus change the Arc Size and Probability_within_arc?

Probability_within_arc. is set for 95%. I though it would be fun for the AI crew not to have such good visual spotting at long distance.
Even in the stock game, the Watch crew is very quick to spot a ship and is almost never wrong. I though make it more random and time for them to see out that far just for a fun factor.

The fact that you can hear contacts using the hydrophones the AI crew misses on purpose. The same for visual spotting at distance -make it so if you are personally looking for ships far away, you will do a better job that the watch crew missed.

Dawn and dusk setting for the light factor will always be a problem. It is it tied mainly to the on/off redlight condition. But maybe something else can be changed.

Of course, we still would want our Radar Warning, Active Radar, and hydrophones to have a use?

Dusk dawn or not, darn, I am reinstalling SH3 tonight in sheer anticipation of this mod. Thanks Jung and Manuel. I really didnt think the game was tweakable to this extent.

I'd say that dawn dusk conditions should rather have the crew spot ability WORSE than better, since it gives you a good reason to be on the conning tower at least twice a day to see if you can out-spot your WO